Friday, June 17, 2016

Waking up to the news that a UK MP had been murdered outside their constituency clinic was profoundly shocking. Learning later that the attacker - who cried "Britain First" during the murder - had not just a long history of mental illness, but an equally long association with far-right politics sadly wasn't. The UK has had an undercurrent of violent racism for a long, long time, and while they've mostly focused on terrorising those of the "wrong" skin colour or political persuasion, it was only a matter of time before they entered the big leagues. A referendum campaign implicitly premised on "immigration" - British for "racism" - provides exactly the sort of context for that sort of shift, for letting people think its OK to start murdering their political opponents.

The obvious question is what impact it will have on the referendum campaign. But to be honest, I don't really care. When your choice is between two groups of racist xenophobes (one of which also destroyed Greece), it is hard to give a shit.

The real worry is what it might do to the UK (and NZ) practice of constituency clinics. MPs making themselves available to their electorates to help them with their problems and hear their concerns is a fundamental link between elected representatives and their voters - and one of the few things the UK's threadbare democracy does well. If MP's withdraw from this, or hide form their voters behind a wall of security and bodyguards, it turns them very visibly into a distant, insulated, isolated elite. And in a political system as unrepresentative as the UK's, that is unlikely to end well for its democracy.